Category Archives: Helps and Tips

Ramadhan is over and that means engaging in everyday activities are a lot easier, alHamdulillah. For instance, a recent post-Ramadhan trek to JoAnn fabrics for a sale. To not go would border on insanity, especially this week.

We added new fabrics to our stash: Country Classic solids, and Quilter’s Showcase prints. Both are 100% cotton and on sale for $2.49 a yard until Aug 17.

Dearest, teach your daughters to maintain their own pattern collections. Each person buys for her own pattern library and pays with her own money, especially during a sale like the one we went to.

Providing funds for these types of purchases encourages our girls to engage in the valuable craft and skill of sewing. And taking them along for sales events is a hands-on demonstration in the art of thrift.

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On a recent shopping trip I decided to look around for moms and daughters wearing feminine fabrics.

I counted 100 different women while at a fabric store (there was a big sale). The results? All except 1 or 2 were wearing jeans and usually a t-shirt!

I even spied what was in shopping carts sure that I would see piles of silky material. Again, nothing feminine. This is very sad.

image via WPClipart

Jeans and a “T” have now become the national uniform in American society.

Yet there are so many beautiful fabric choices available to women. Flowy ones that make a man realize a woman is gentle and soft.

If we women do not take care to avoid looking manly, husbands will notice. Most will make a negative comment just as we would make a negative comment if our husband came home wearing velvet pants or a chiffon shirt. It would be difficult not to say anything.

On a hopeful note, I found a wonderful list of feminine fabrics in the book “Fascinating Womanhood.” I wish every woman had this list. And used it.

How To Acquire Femininity Through Fabric Choices

Masculine Fabrics — avoid these since they will make you appear manly
tweeds
herringbones
denims
pinstripes
hard woollens
glen plaids
any fabric commonly worn by men

Feminine Fabric Homework

Look through all of the clothing items you currently own. How many are made from masculine fabrics? Can you feminize those items? If not, consider replacing them with something more feminine according to what you can afford.

Fabric Resources

How To Identify Fabrics
A fabric dictionary from the Better Homes and Garden Sewing Book. It includes a photo of each type of fabric. Be sure to click the “Learn about more fabrics” link on the page to see more.

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One of the many things I have learned from those before me is to keep a diary devoted to your hand-made goodies.

Image from SewWell.blogspot

Sewing and crafting journals are useful for jotting down notes on sewing, knitting, crocheting, and crafting projects.

Use it to keep track of projects and their instructions, store pattern information, write down measurements and sizes, and save photos of finished projects.

It is easy to build this new type of journaling habit. Set aside 5 minutes when you are finished working on a project. Write down helpful hints such as thread, tension, needles, fabrics and notions, or mistakes to look out for next time. For crocheting and knitting, make notes about yarns, hooks and needles, project peculiarities, etc.

You can use a 3-ring binder or a diary-style book. Some craftswomen have both. They tuck their bound journals inside a binder pocket –the best of both worlds.

TV - Yes or No? [PDF] The Permanent Committee of Scholars have stated (in a fatwa) that the television is an instrument that in and of itself has no ruling regarding it; rather, the ruling applies to its use -- Dr. Saleh as-Saleh (rahimahullaah)